Randy Taylor, 48, was convicted of killing Alexis Murphy, 17, in 2014
The family of Alexis Tiara Murphy, 17, finally have some semblance of closure after 7 years of searching for her—though the circumstances were devastatingly tragic. Alexis left her home in Shipman, Virginia to visit the nearby city of Lynchburg. She was last seen on surveillance video at a Lovingston gas station. After seven long years and multiple searches, her remains were finally discovered on a Lovingston property on December 3, 2020.
It wasn’t until February 5, 2021 that the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond was able to positively identify the remains as belonging to Alexis Murphy. In the wake of this tragic development, her family released a statement about their devastating loss, “While we have been grieving the loss of Alexis since 2013, we remained hopeful that she would be found alive and well. Alexis was the fashionista, athlete, and joker of our family; we were blessed to have loved her for 17 years, and her memory will continue to live on through us all.”
The original search conducted outside Lovingston in 2013 involved helicopters, canine units, and volunteers searching for any sign of the missing teenager. While they searched, police poured over the surveillance video from the Lovingston gas station. Police were able identify a person of interest on the surveillance video, Randy Taylor, 48. Taylor was arrested following the discovery of one of Alexis’s hairs in his camper. Despite Taylor’s insistence that he only knew Alexis for a brief time when she offered to help him buy marijuana, Taylor was convicted of her murder in 2014. In a statement, the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office stated “With the comprehensive investigation, successful prosecution by the Nelson County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, and the recovery of Alexis, this case is now no longer active.”
Have you ever seen a missing person TikTok? As an emerging platform, TikTok has already become a sensation, allowing creators everywhere to spread short content quickly to get likes, views, and subscribers. In recent years, TikTok’s wide audience and ability to share information fast has allowed its creators to also use it for the wide spread of information. In this way, the platform has become an ideal way to quickly circulate information about missing persons.
In 2002, Tiktok user Alicia Kozak was groomed online and subsequently kidnaped by a predator who held her for four days before she was finally recovered. She was 13 years old at the time, and believed the person she was speaking to online to be a boy her own age. In reality, it was a 38 year-old man named Scott Tyree. He groomed her over a year before luring her to meet him. He coerced her into his vehicle, then drover her across state lines from Pennsylvania to Virginia. An anonymous tip came into law enforcement about Alicia’s location. The FBI were able to locate Tyree’s IP address and thus his physical address where they successfully recovered Alicia.
Alica’s story was one of the first high-profile stories on the dangers of the internet and grooming behavior. Predators slide into chatrooms and private messages, ingratiating themselves to minors with the intention of luring them from the safety of their homes and into their captivity, taking kidnapping plots to an entirely different level. It’s a danger that not many parents were aware of at the time, and as a survivor, Alicia saw an opportunity to educate the public about internet safety. She started the Alicia Project, an advocacy group that toured around the nation, speaking to children in schools about remaining safe online.
Since the beginning of her advocacy, Alicia has moved her message online, using the power of the social media algorithm to raise awareness for other missing person cases. By its very nature, TikTok provides concentrated content in a finite amount of time, which can be ideal conditions for spreading awareness about a problem or a cause. A missing person TikTok has the potential to reach thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of people. When someone goes missing, a focused and strategic effort to share their face and story can go miles towards finding answers in their disappearance. You can learn more about using social media to locate missing persons here.
Since the disappearance of her two children over a year ago, the nation has been following the updates on “Mommy Doomsday” subject Lori Vallow Daybell. The Vallow Daybell saga has been a rollercoaster punctuated by death and tragedy that is now going to be the subject of a new true-crime podcast by Dateline. It’s the story of doomsday rhetoric, fanaticism, and murder.
People first heard the name Lori Daybell back in 2019 when her children Joshua “J.J.” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17, were finally reported missing. The children had not been seen for weeks since Vallow elected to pull them out of public school, citing the family’s alleged move to a different state. After her children were reported missing, Vallow and her new husband, Chad Daybell, fell off the grid for weeks. Law enforcement finally tracked the couple down in Hawaii, with no sign of the children. Despite repeated assertions that the children were alive and well, Vallow was finally served with a court order to produce the children in January of 2020. The deadline came and went without any sign of the children and Vallow and Daybell were arrested.
In a heartbreaking development in the case, the remains of J.J. and Tylee were finally located in June of 2020 on Chad Daybell’s Idaho property after a search warrant was executed. “It’s not the outcome we had hoped; to be able to find the children safe. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of J.J. and Tylee,” the Rexburg Police Department stated in a press release.
The tragic deaths of the children are not the only factor in the case against Vallow and Daybell. Vallow’s late husband, Chuck Vallow, was killed in a domestic dispute between himself and Lori Vallow’s Brother Alex Cox, in which Cox claimed self-defense. Cox died in December of natural causes.
The events of the Vallow Daybell case were triggered in the fall of 2019 when Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were not yet married. Chad Daybell was still married to his late wife, Tammy Daybell, who died only two weeks before Lori Daybell’s children disappeared. Chad Daybell described his wife’s affliction as “a bad cough,” subsequently passing in her sleep. This came as a shock to many who knew Tammy, knowing her to be a healthy individual who was training to run a marathon. Tammy Daybell was buried without an autopsy, and following the discovery of Lori Vallow’s children, investigators reopened the investigation into her death. While Vallow and Daybell await trial on charges related to the deaths of Tylee and J.J., investigators exhumed Tammy Daybell’s body to perform an autopsy. While the autopsy has been completed, the results still remain under seal as prosecutors continue to build a case.
Have you seen missing mother, Crystal Marie Fry? For months, her family has been searching for answers following Crystal’s disappearance amid distressing circumstances in her personal life. After 90 days with no case progression, the family has turned to the missing person investigators at Lauth Investigations International to join the search for Crystal.
Crystal Marie Fry, 31, was last heard from on November 11, 2020. At the time of her disappearance, Crystal was living in Baltimore, MD with her boyfriend, the father of her two youngest daughters. On November 11, Crystal contacted her mother, Teresa Silverman, to explain some of the details of what she called the “worst three days of her life.” Crystal claimed someone had kicked in her front door, damaging it in the process, so she would be staying with the father of her oldest daughter until it could be fixed. It was during this time that Crystal reportedly claimed to be “afraid for her life.” The following day when she was expected to turn up to her mother’s home to explain more about the break-in, Crystal never showed up.
When she spoke to Lauth investigators, Teresa described her daughter as a beautiful mother who was always stepping up to help out, “She’s caring. If anything’s wrong, she steps right in and tries to help take care of people. She loves her girls to death.” Teresa advised Lauth Investigators that Crystal would never have gone this long without contacting her children, claiming that holidays and special occasions were very important to her. Crystal also shared passions for baking and cooking with her girls, who have been missing their mother for over three months.
The last person she was known to have contact with was the father of her oldest daughter, when she told him she got a flat tire on the way to his residence. In the weeks following their last communication, Teresa Silverman hit the streets, trying to find the location of her daughter’s last residence when she didn’t respond to messages. After days of searching, they were finally able to locate the townhouse where she had been staying in Baltimore where her car was parked out front—one of the tires still flat.
Since she reported her daughter missing, Teresa says her perception of law enforcement’s efforts to investigate Crystal’s case have been beyond disappointing, reporting difficulties getting updates on the case and a general feeling of apathy from police. Now she has contracted Lauth Investigations International to conduct an independent investigation concurrent with law enforcement to ensure that no lead is unexplored in her daughter’s disappearance. “The circumstances under which Crystal went missing are troubling, and our team is exploring multiple leads in her disappearance,” said lead investigator, Thomas Lauth. Lauth has over 30 years of experience investigating missing person cases of all types and is considered one of the country’s foremost experts in missing persons.
Crystal Marie Fry is 31 years old, is 5 feet 7 inches tall, weights approximately 135lbs and, has blue eyes and brown hair. You can donate to the GoFundMe for the independent investigation here.
Anyone with information please contact the Baltimore Police Department at 410-396-2221 or call 911.
For over two years, the family of missing postal worker, Kierra Coles, 26, have been racked with worry over the disappearance of the missing mother—especially Karen Phillips, Kierra’s own mother. To further exacerbate the uncertainty, Kierra was about three months pregnant when she went missing in a case that has been described by Chicago police as “a high-risk missing person investigation with potential foul play suspected.” The most crucial clue in the case was a surveillance video that was believed to be the last confirmed sighting of Kierra Coles just before she vanished, but new information has come to light that could change the entire context of this case.
The surveillance video that was believed to be the last confirmed sighting of Kierra Coles was dated October 3, 2018 at 11:45 AM. At the time, many believed it to be Kierra, walking down the street wearing her postal worker’s uniform. Following her disappearance, Kierra’s keys and lunch were found on the front seat of her car, which was parked in front of the building where she lived. More than two years later, new information about the case has finally been made public. The neighbor handed over the surveillance video to investigators and Karen Phillips, Kierra’s mother, who was immediately concerned that something was not right about the video. “It’s a mother thing. You just know your child. That’s not her walk. She was a little bit smaller and a little bit shorter.” Phillips informed investigators about her feelings regarding the video, telling them that the woman in the video was not her daughter. Investigators took her concerns seriously, but in order to preserve the investigation, Phillips was asked not to tell anyone that she suspected the woman in the video was not her daughter.
In another twist, Phillips told NBC 5 that there are two more videos depicting her daughter from the night of October 2nd. One video from another neighbor shows Kierra leaving her apartment building with her boyfriend, Josh Simmons, who also works at the post office. They got into separate cars and drove off. That video was also turned over to the police. Another video from ATM surveillance camera showed Kierra withdrawing $400 from her account and giving it to Josh.
Chicago Police have refused to confirm any of the details regarding the additional surveillance videos, or Phillips’ assertion that the woman in the original video isn’t her daughter, Kierra Coles. They only confirmed to NBC 5 that they had a concrete timeline of Kierra’s movements on October 2nd before she went missing. The official statement from CPD states “The Coles case remains a high-risk missing person investigation with potential foul play suspected. At this point, anyone with knowledge of her of her last known whereabouts is asked to contact the Chicago Police Department, as we are seeking any and all information in an attempt to locate her and we won’t stop until we do.”
